Poor AI Factions

[Aldwen]

I'm guessing this isn't suppose to happen but is the AI suppose to be poor? This is, granted, the first time I've played past 50 turns but I've found that all of the AI factions have gone into bankruptcy. Usually they have hundreds of thousands of florins and financing for them isn't an issue but not now it seems.




I'm on turn 165 and the year is 1162 (.5 timescale) and most of the AI, as you can see have been broke for about 100 turns I'm playing with 5.1, and Echads 2.0 fix, and again this is the first time I've played past 50 some odd turns, but this seems really strange to me. The dips and resulting bankruptcy have corresponded to war. Somewhere near 1100 (~30 turns) the first crusade was called. Coincidently everyone who joined the crusade went broke. Portugal has managed to stay pretty neutral since the game began. They're allies with Spain and are only at war with the Muslim's, but with Spain controlling the Gibraltar Straight they've seen an era of peace. Denmark has, as well, been pretty peaceful, as you can see from their map position(below.) They've only had one major war with Lithuania at which point they controlled several provinces but the Lithuanians pushed them out before it escalated out of control.

The AI is still fielding armies, whoa be to he who invades Scotland



The thing is, in Scotlands case, they cannot afford ships to bring their massive armies across to Europe. Oh it's worth mentioning that there are two more full stacks up near Edinburgh. The situation across the world seems to be relative as well. The AI does fine when if comes to armies but their cities are vastly undeveloped and they don't invest much in their navies. Years of war often leaves most of their buildings in disarray. Ireland, me, controls the Western Seaboard the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Only Pirates ever challenge me. When Egypt controlled Gaza, however, they use to build ships.

The major issue is becoming that because the AI can no longer manage cities and money the world hasn't changed much for about 30 years (60 turns) I guess that is far more realistic but it does get kind of boring when the biggest mover and shaker is me and I'm not a very aggressive player.

World Map of 1160:



*The Moors have taken back Tripoli, and Ireland conquered Gaza as of 1162

World Map of 1125:



The game is still fun as hell, especially for someone like me who like this kind of realism and not constant invasions, but it does get old at times AND this may actually be a bug, who knows.

If anything I think it may be related to the recruit priorities Echad introduced, but I have no clue honestly. That's the only thing I can thing of that influences how the AI spends their money and they sure do field massive armies now.

Getting my foot into the Holy Lands sure has be a struggle. I might not be able to hold onto Gaza with the Egyptians attacking as frequently as they do, and Banghazi may prove a problem now that I'm next to the Moors. The Templars have been struggling to hold onto Cairo for the past 10, 15 years and were it not for my forces in Alexandria assisting them they would have lost it to the Egyptians a long time ago. Speaking of Alexandria, the only reason I control that is because of my Crusading general Laurence the Chivalrous maintaining the civil order when he dies though...



**Oh yeah I'm also not using the regularly Lusted Campaign AI. I'm using his older version the Experimental one. The newer one was to aggressive for me. Not sure if that plays into this.

***Also does the money cheat no longer work for the AI? I tried to add_money xxx for every faction but I always get "faction not recognized" or some such. Were the faction names changed in some way?

[Echad]

I have few things to say:

1 - I see that my latest colours are VERY distinguishable and pretty on the campaign map.

2 - Actually, the EXPERIMENTAL AI was more agressive, but the FINAL one, i.e. the one that goes with my latest Fix Packs is actually morer peaceful, and is known for maintaining alliances and no backstabbing.

3 - If you installed my Fix Pack automatically, i.e. via the installer and not by moving the files by hand, you automatically installed the latest AI as well... If you want any other, you should install it on top. =)

4 - I do not know, how the money cheat is supposed to work, either with names in brackets, i.e. internal ones, or the ones you see on screen, but I've heard it works with both... Try to put the name as it is written in game now, probably substituting a space character with underscore or something.

[Aldwen]

Yeah, your new colors look awesome

That's weird about the AI too, maybe I just had a bad string of luck with his Final one but when I installed it the game was nutty, every turn I'd have a whole list of War/Alliance/Broken Alliances/Peace. It was pretty crazy so I went back to his Experimental one found here because of what Lusted said on his final release thread,

The campaign AI differs from the last version of my latest Experimental one in that i've made it more aggressive in war and made several final adjustments.

That's what I was going on at least. :/ And yeah, I installed that older version after installing your fix pack so it s all good

With brackets you say? I'll have to try that out when I play. I was just doing add_money france and I got the error. If I put it in quotes "france" or capitalized same thing. Neither one worked as even add 1000000 didn't change a thing. I'll test it out in a bit, thanks

[Echad]

I meant the name, that is included in {} brackets in the game files, i.e. Russia for Novgorod and Milan for Genoa.

[Aldwen]

Nope, {}, [], (), and "" don't work. In fact it lets you put whatever you want inside and it accepts it. Like add_money {japan} and it works without an error.

[Echad]

You got me completely wrong!

Open: "Medieval II Backup\mods\Stainless_Steel\data\descr_sm_factions.txt"

And look for the faction names here, about brackets I meant about like the ones found in "Medieval II Backup\mods\Stainless_Steeldata\text\expanded.txt", you should enter it without them, just search for appropriate name in the brackets.

[Aldwen]

Yar, that didn't work either :/

[shane32ie]

Just cheat and give yourself the money, then send an ol' diplomat down to them and gift them like 100,000 and regular tribute of 10,000 for the next 10 turns.

[Turbo]

I've found there are a couple of primary reasons this happens:

1) It is the support costs that cripple the AI as you are seeing.
2) Another cause is the use of leaderless stacks that get taken over by the rebels.
3) The AI is programmed to spend money not balance it.

Here are some solutions:

1) A progressive money script that shovels money to the AI only when the AI is broke and getting deeper into debt.

2) Modify the character traits file and ensure that the AI gets decent tax and trade traits and eliminate the possibility of getting some crippling ones like corrupt, expensive tastes, disloyal, slothful, etc. This may sound extreme, but the AI takes any general that it is offered including those with terrible traits and even high disloyalty.

[Aldwen]

I was going to do that shane, but then every faction will love me to bits and pieces. That would be game ending. The Turks and Egyptians hate my guts and if I suddenly gave them thousands of florins they wouldn't mind Irish settlers in the Holy Land.

Turbo, can I create a script that works with a current save? I know there is a script to deal with AI debt in campaign_script but as far as I've understood it that file one effects new games. Changes to it won't happen in a current save. Either way I've bumped those numbers from adding 5000 to a bankrupt AI to 15000.

[Turbo]

I was going to do that shane, but then every faction will love me to bits and pieces. That would be game ending. The Turks and Egyptians hate my guts and if I suddenly gave them thousands of florins they wouldn't mind Irish settlers in the Holy Land.

Turbo, can I create a script that works with a current save? I know there is a script to deal with AI debt in campaign_script but as far as I've understood it that file one effects new games. Changes to it won't happen in a current save. Either way I've bumped those numbers from adding 5000 to a bankrupt AI to 15000.

Unfortunately the only way is to add it through the campaign_script file and as the name implies that runs only once at the start of a new game.

You might want to try copying the current money script and adding a new one that executes at -2500, and maybe another that executes at -5000. Adding 5000, 10000, and 20000. What is very good about the original money script is that it is not a money making proposition.

Don't underestimate the positive impacts of adding some good positive traits to the AI.

[Frankenschnabel]

You probably wanna know the commands for the new factions/name changed factions, is that it?

add_money knights_templar, 10000

other than that is

kievan_rus
milan (genoa is still milan in console)
norway
russia (novgorod is still russia in console)
ireland
aragon
spain (castille is still spain in console)
egypt (console name)
moors (console name)
turks (console name)

Did I forget any?

[Turbo]

You probably wanna know the commands for the new factions/name changed factions, is that it?

add_money knights_templar, 10000

other than that is

kievan_rus
milan (genoa is still milan in console)
norway
russia (novgorod is still russia in console)
ireland
aragon
spain (castille is still spain in console)
egypt (console name)
moors (console name)
turks (console name)

Did I forget any?

Easiest way is to copy the existing money and paste it to the campaign_script file. You can then change the treasury number to whatever you want it to be.

[spanish_emperor]

You probably wanna know the commands for the new factions/name changed factions, is that it?

add_money knights_templar, 10000

other than that is

kievan_rus
milan (genoa is still milan in console)
norway
russia (novgorod is still russia in console)
ireland
aragon
spain (castille is still spain in console)
egypt (console name)
moors (console name)
turks (console name)

Did I forget any?

yeah you forgot england, france, scotland, KOJ, Byzantine empire, sicily, Venice, holy roman empire, denmark, teutonic order, poland and hungary i believe....quite a few lol

[messenger42]

Turbo!

Can you write a script whereas if the AI has < 20000 florins, then it will automatically give them say another 20000 to spent. In this way it makes the game more challenging instead of us fighting a bankrupcy AI. Then we human always win at the end.

[Point Blank]

Yes that would do it.

[MilesTeg]

Long time lurker on these forums but
Ive been playing a SS5.1 Late Era campaign as Kiev for many weeks now. Without restarting, ive added Lusted's experimental, then his final battle and campaign AIs, and the unit build priority script.
The battle ai + unit build priority script have really changed the nature of M2TW for me, making some battles far more challenging. There is simply no comparison between this combination and vanilla.

With the unit build priority script, and extra funding I give them from the console, ive seen egypt (whom Im currently at war with), send armies at me consisting of 6 mamaluks +4 egyptian mounted archers + a mix of tabydara, gulams and spearmen. Lusted's battle ai makes brutal use of cavalry, (I really have to be careful with my HA heavy armies), and the mamaluks seem to be faster than their unit card indicates (They can always chase down my heavy horse archers)

to the point, what I noticed after installing the build priorities script is that the ai's army composition vastly improved (previously there was way too much siege, and too many militia units), but like the OP, more than half of the ai nations went from sizable treasuries to bankrupt after I put in the build priorities changes. Only the tiniest nations seem to still have surpluses, regardless of if they are at war.

Since I dont want to restart my game, every turn, I look at the financial graph, and if the ai nation looks like it has less than 50,000 I will, for example
add_money france, 9000
in the console ~

I started with just 9000 each for a few turns, then noticing they were still bankrupt, tried repeating the command for each faction (up arrow), and am currently giving each 27,000 a turn, and egypt, whom Im at war with, 36,000 or more a turn. Most of the big countries are STILL bankrupt, but...

the armies they field are really impressive now, as I described above...
nearly full stacks of their best heavy inf and cav

I had one siege where the teutonics had 6 dismounted halbruders and 6 or so other solid troops defending a fortress with their (sub-par stats)faction leader. I had no siege, but had 2 full stacks of inf and vangrian archers there to attack it, and -luckily- I set one army to just be reinforcements. I went through 1300 men(small 75-60-30 unit size), mostly dismounted boyar sons, vangrian spearmen and archers, just to take both sets of fortress walls with 12 ladders. It often took 3 units of my boyar sons simultaneously attacking to rout a single unit of halbruder on the walls. This was made more painful because the ballista towers had killed my general's unit down to 3, and I didnt want him to die, so I could no longer park him at the foot of the walls to influence the fight.

to sum up.. with lusted's battle ai, and the unit priorities script, the ai can build decent armies. It just can not pay for them.

if someone is working on money scripts, can I suggest logic something like
if ai_faction's money < 40000
add 9000
if ai_faction's money < 40000
add 9000
if ai_faction's money < 40000 and hard
add 9000
if ai_faction's money < 40000 and very hard
add 9000

etc

for each faction

I dont know how much money to give but 27000 a turn still does not put the larger ai nations in the black.

oh for ref im playing vh battles and hard campaign (with the rule that I can never start a war nor bait an enemy into attacking me in any way). I chose hard campaign because wanted some diplomacy and allies to be possible.
Though I will not allow myself to ally with the pope.
But it turns out that everyone hates me no matter what, unless im attacking someone there already at war with. I dont use assassins, etc. but the constantly degrading relations pretty much give me very poor relations, even with small ammounts of tribute.

[Echad]

Err, hemeant the ones that DIFFER between the console (internal name) and ui (visual) one and listing all the new factions. He forgot KoJ and Teutons, others are pretty guessable.

[spanish_emperor]

well i don't cheat so i don't know